Tag / major league baseball

by Nathan Coumbe

Impresarios make softball happen

The MLB is investing in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, a long-overdue organization for the United States’ outstanding softball players.

I’m sharing this article here, not because the MLB is investing in it, but for a different reason entirely.

As I read this, all I could think was, “A group of impresarios made this happen.”

Impresario: someone who organizes something, who brings the right people together to connect and make things happen that need to happen.

A group of people (mostly strong, driven women) said, “Why isn’t there a professional softball league? Why aren’t softball players making a career of this after dominating in college like all the men in MLB get to do?”

So what did they do? They made it happen themselves. Eventually, other groups, such as ESPN and MLB, took notice and decided to invest. But that isn’t the impressive part.

What’s impressive is that a small group of people decided that something that didn’t exist should exist. And they made it happen, without permission, by bringing the best and the brightest softballers together to build something great.

This is the work of an impresario.

This is leadership.

by Nathan Coumbe

How to get into the Hall of Fame

What does it take for a Major League Baseball player to earn a spot in the MLB Hall of Fame?

It takes failure.

Not a little bit of failure – it requires failing almost two-thirds of the time.

The best baseball players who’ve ever played the sport only average a hit 3 out of 10 times they come up to bat. That means they fail at their job 7 out of 10 times. And yet we still regard them as the best.

Why then, in our own lives, do we strive so hard to avoid failure at any cost? What if the avoidance of failure is preventing us from succeeding at a level that would cause us to stand out from the pack?

We don’t learn how to succeed through books, lectures, or seminars – we learn through failure, the greatest teacher of all. The books and seminars can help us avoid mistakes committed by others who’ve walked the path before us, but we have to fail on our own, in our own way, to find what works and what doesn’t.

To paraphrase Seth Godin in his webinar a few days ago: success requires time and failure.

Failing not only teaches you lessons from which you can improve, it also makes you more resilient to future failures. Each time you fail, you build a reserve for the future, which grows your confidence and allows you to try bigger and better things the next time. It’s a cycle that only spirals up.

What could you do in your life where you would consider batting .300 to be Hall of Fame-worthy success?

Don’t fear failure – fear never taking the chance of doing something great.

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